Typically, in the plant nursery industry, trees and shrubs are excavated and their root balls bagged for transplanting to a customer's site. Many different pieces of equipment have been proposed and are available to accomplish the excavation and balling of the plants. However, after the plants are "bagged and balled" in the field, they must be loaded onto a transportation vehicle such as a flatbed truck for transporting to another site such as a distributor or customer site. They must then be unloaded from the flatbed truck while awaiting further transportation or replanting.
In the process of loading and unloading, it is common for some of the plants to be damaged. Sometimes the damage can be as great as ten percent of the plant inventory being transported. The damaged plants are not desired by the customer and may be unsalable by a distributor. Another problem is the weight of the plants. Manual lifting and loading can require substantial labor and time. Other expenses may be incurred such as compensation for injury occurring to manual workers in the loading process.
Other devices have been proposed for handling the plants. However, each such proposed apparatus suffers shortcomings such as lack of maneuverability, overly time-consuming operation, requiring supplemental manual labor, potential hazard to laborers, or pre-positioning of the plants in order to use the apparatus. The equipment of the present invention obviates these problems and provides substantial advantages to the user. The equipment can grasp plants in an array of orientations and requires little or no supplemental labor for loading the plants for further transportation. This presents a substantial economic as well as labor-saving advantage. The equipment also, when properly operated, allows a substantial decrease in the number of plants damaged during loading. Generally, plants may be loaded and unloaded at a faster rate when compared to previously available equipment.
These and other features and advantages of the invention will be more fully understood from the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments which should be read in light of the accompanying drawings.